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THE STORY OF RUBBER 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSiT. 



The Story 
of Rubber 



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ff^hat it is 

and what it 

does 



The Boston Woven Hose fir 9 Rubber 
Company 

Cambridge, Massachusetts 




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The 
Story of Rubber 



W T hat it is and 
what it does 



Chapter I 
What Is%ubber? 




N tracing the manufacture of rubber goods 
first comes the question — what is rubber? 
In order to understand the nature of the 
rubber industry it is necessary to know 
something of the origin and source of this 
very interesting substance. 

Rubber is obtained from a tree, or, in fact, a large family 
of trees, found in most tropical climates, growing under 
different conditions and consequently producing various 
qualities of rubber. 

The most valuable rubber has for many years grown wild 
and is obtained from the forests of Brazil, along the banks 
of the Amazon River. This rubber is commonly known as 
Para, after the town of Para, from which large quantities 
are exported yearly. 

The Brazilian rubber forests are located from eight hun- 
dred to twelve hundred miles from the mouth of the Amazon 



River, in a dense tropical jungle, where rubber gathering at 
best is a difficult and hazardous business. Few white men 
care to live in this equatorial climate, and the many dis- 
agreeable features attending the production of wild rubber, 
as well as the constantly growing fear among rubber pro- 
ducers that the supply in the accessible districts would some 
day become depleted, caused early attention to be given to 
the subject of rubber cultivation where the production of 
crude rubber could be carried on under more favorable con- 
ditions and with plenty of room for expansion. 

As early as 1876 seeds of the Hevea or Brazilian rubber 
tree were planted in the British Botanical Gardens of Ceylon 
and Singapore, simply as a botanical experiment. Twelve 
years later, however, the first trees were tapped and it was 
then realized that rubber cultivation was no longer a fancy, 
but that the foundation of a new industry had been laid. 
For the next few years much planting was done, and in 1891 
it was decided that the East Indies furnish the ideal location, 
and tapping was begun on a commercial basis. 

In 1 9 14, fifty thousand tons of cultivated rubber were 
produced, the amount almost equalling the Brazilian total 
export. This was an encouraging prospect to the rubber 
manufacturers, who had tor years feared shortages and in- 
creasing prices on account ot the limitations and difficulties 
of the Brazilian source of supply. 

The earlv plantation rubber was not equal to the wild 
rubber in quality, tor, although cultivation improves all 
forms of plant life, the best rubber is obtained from mature 
trees, twenty-five or thirty years old, and few plantations 
had at that time trees of half this age. As the trees grow 
older, therefore, the quality of cultivated rubber is steadily 

4 




The tropical forest 

improving and the volume increasing. Easily sixty per 
cent of the rubber used today comes from the East Indies, 
and it is thought to be only a question of time when the 
Brazilian source of supply will be given up altogether. 




Chapter II 

HoJv T^ubber Is Obtained 

HE process of gathering the latex of the rubber 
tree is one of tapping, much as maple trees 
are tapped tor sugar sap ; the latex itself, 
however, being more like milk than syrup. 
It is not the sap of the tree, but a liquid 
fulfilling a purpose not yet definitely understood. It is 
white, and on standing separates into a liquid, thick at the 
top and thin at the bottom, like cream and skim milk, and 
even resembles them under the microscope. To the touch, 
however, it is sticky and more like mucilage. 

In the early morning, during the dry season, when the 
latex collects, a native cuts in the bark of the tree a series 
of V-shaped channels, herring-bone fashion, all leading into 
a main incision or artery, at the foot of which a receptacle 
is placed to catch the liquid. The latex is gathered in the 
afternoon or the next morning, a full-grown rubber tree 
yielding about twenty pounds a year. 

The native treatment consists of curing the latex by 
smoke, as hams are cured, a sheet-iron funnel-shaped stove 
supplying the smoke, which is produced by burning palm 
nuts. These, being rich in oil, give off a dense yellow 
smudge. 

The latex is poured into a basin, and the native, by in- 
serting a stick or paddle, builds up his ball of rubber, 
or " biscuit," by drying on layer after layer, all the 
while revolving his paddle over the smudge of the fire 
until the smoke and heat coagulate each added coat of 
rubber. 

6 




iA native workman 



A good workman adds from five to six pounds an hour 
to his " biscuit," which, when finished, weighs from fifty 
to seventy-five pounds. 




Chapter III 
'The Early Industry 

IKE tobacco and Indian corn, rubber was a 
gift of America to Europe. The Spanish 
explorers of Mexico and Brazil found the 
natives playing games with rubber balls, and 
some French astronomers who were in South 
America in 1 730 taking observations brought back to 
Europe with them a few native-made rubber bottles. The 
product came to be called " rubber " from its use in rubbing 
out lead-pencil marks, and "India rubber" from the 
delusion that the luxurious New World was India, that 
long-sought golden empire of old. The native name is 
caoutchouc [koo chook'), and a similar product from the 
Malay Peninsula is known as gutta percha. 

Finding their crude rubber bottles in demand, the natives 
began fashioning cruder shoes, principally at first for the 
Portuguese traders, who disliked slopping about in South 
American swamps. 

Salem clipper ships had brought back crude rubber balls 
for ballast, and eventually a few of the South American 
rubber shoes found their way to New England. Immediately 
their possibilities were recognized and certain ingenious man- 
ufacturers took up the making of a similar product. Capital 
backed the new industry eagerly. The idea of waterproof 
shoes was a novelty, and the new "gum shoes," as they 
came to be called, proved very profitable for a time. 

Success, however, was not easily attained. It was simple 
enough to soften the rubber gum to make it pliable, and 
fashion it into overshoes; but it was not so easy to make them 

8 







Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 



"Biscuits of crude Tara rubber 



practical, because on hot days they stuck like pitch to every- 
thing they touched and on cold days became stiff and hard. 

Such were the conditions when Charles Goodyear, a 
Connecticut hardware merchant and inventor of farming 
implements, went into a store in New York to buy a life 
preserver. Struck with what he considered a defecl in the 
way its tube was made, and believing himself able to remedy 
the error, he entered into correspondence with the manu- 
facturers, who, only too glad to get a sympathetic listener, 
told him at length their bitter experience in trying to make 
durable articles from such a contrary material. 

The seed of this suggestion, falling on good ground, took 
root, sprouted, and from that day Goodyear's one ambition 
was to discover a practical method for handling rubber. 

9 



Certainly Goodyear lacked nothing of the inventor so far 
as misfortune goes. Although in moderate circumstances 
to begin with, he became poor through his experiments, 
and was forever patching out with visits to the pawnshop 
the charity of his friends — whom he happily lived long 
enough to repay. He was repeatedly imprisoned for debt, 
and was reputed even to have pawned his children's books 
to get money to go on with his researches. Nevertheless 
he refused friendly offers of re-establishment in the hard- 
ware business, which he had given up for his experiments, 
and stuck to his cherished " gum elastic," as he called it, 
as tenaciously as the " gum elastic " stuck to everything 
else. He slept, walked, and ate with it. His family found 
pieces of it on the window panes and dinner plates. He 
had a full suit of it, and one of his friends once said to a 
stranger who was asking for him, " Mr. Goodyear is the 
man you will see walking about all dressed in rubber, and 
carrying a rubber purse — with nothing in it." 

For a time Goodyear experimented with nitric acid to 
treat his rubber, but he soon found that the acid affected 
only the surface of the rubber, leaving it soft inside, like 
a pie-filling between two crusts. Plainly he must turn to 
new methods. He had experienced too many failures to 
view a few added ones with alarm, and so began experi- 
menting with other things in place of nitric acid. 

His actual method of vulcanization seems to have been 
discovered by accident. Sitting near the fire on a winter 
night talking with his brother, he was holding in his hand 
a small piece of rubber which he had sprinkled with sulphur. 
Suddenly it slipped from his fingers and fell on the red hot 
stove, when, to his astonishment, instead of melting, it flat- 

IO 




The boiler room 

tened out into a small disc. Upon lifting it from the stove 
he found it not only unmelted, but perfectly pliable and 
resilient, charged through and through with sulphur. He 
then nailed it to the door-post outside overnight, and in 
the morning found it still the same. It had thus endured 



I I 



heat and cold without change, the sulphur having perme- 
ated its mass, or, as we now say, "vulcanized" it. Because 
rubber melts at a comparatively low temperature, neither 
he nor anyone else had ever thought of subjecting it with 
sulphur to a high one. The accident had definitely settled 
that point by conducting the experiment for him, and thus 
his goal was won. 

The term " vulcanizing" (from Vulcan) was given to the 
Goodyear process bv a Scotchman named Mcintosh, said 
to have been a partner of Goodyear, who was the first to 
enclose sheets of rubber between sheets of cloth in the form 
of a rubber coat, and whose name has since been a synonym 
for raincoats. For rubber clothing had shared the public in- 
fatuation over rubber shoes, as well as its ensuing hatred 
of them, and Daniel Webster, who bought one of the early 
mackintoshes, later described in court how in cold weather 
he could stand it on the floor bolt upright and stiff" as a 
board, until the thermometer rose again. Early purchasers 
were always advised to keep away from heat lest their coats 
should melt ; a warning well substantiated by the experience 
of an early assistant of Goodyear's, called Jerry, who on 
one occasion sat down near the stove in a pair of rubber 
overalls. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he 
was finally separated from his rubber clothing, the heat of 
the fire having fused Jerry, chair, and overalls into one 
cohesive mass. 

Goodyear was quick to appreciate the value of his dis- 
covery, and half wild with joy went everywhere with samples 
of his product, seeking to demonstrate its perfection for all 
kinds of uses, whether previously tried or untried. The 
news, boundless in its meaning to him, smote on deaf ears, 

12 

















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77;^ genera/or room 

as the public had grown sceptical of rubber goods. It was 
years before he began to reap the profits of his invention, 
but he had discovered the process that today makes rubber 
one of the most adaptable servants of man, and that has 
coupled his name to immortality. 



Chapter IV 
The zJtCodern Industry 
OODYEAR was not wholly out of the woods, 
however, when he discovered vulcanizing, 
since to be sure of his results he must know 
the exact time and temperature for curing his 
compounds. This cannot be said to have 
ever been discovered. It is to this day one of those knacks 
of knowing exactly how much and how long, without always 

1 3 




knowing just why ; an example of that type of instinct 
which constitutes the skill of the craftsman and fits him for 
his own especial work. 

The assertion is frequently made that rubber goods are 
not all rubber. They are not and cannot be. Most rubber 
goods so made would be quite useless. Almost all would 
be prohibitive in price. Pure rubber jar rings, with only 
a minimum profit, would at the normal cost of rubber have 
to sell at one dollar and a half per pound, yet would seal 
fruit jars no better than those now sold at thirty cents. 
Pure rubber belting would cost a fortune, but would not 
transmit power so ably or so long as the belts now made 
of the heavy cotton ducks and rubber compounds, which 
study and experience have developed for present-day use. 
The question in most cases is purely one of service ; of 
goods' worth and money's worth ; the exact specifications 
in manufacture being the result of long and careful research ; 
and for this reason, as well as many others, a glimpse into 
the present-day manufacture of rubber is as interesting as 
its past history. Surely both entertainment and instruction 
can be derived from a visit to the plant of the Boston Woven 
Hose & Rubber Company, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
one of the world's largest rubber manufactories and a typical 
American industry ot the first rank. 

From the firmly pulsing heart of this giant business — 
its half-million-dollar power plant — to its handsome suite 
of managerial and executive offices, nothing is omitted that 
can possibly make for ease, speed, and surety of operation, 
as well as knowledge, skill, and power in the production 
of rubber goods. 

A little journey through the factory of the Boston Woven 

J 4 




The power plant iy night 



Hose & Rubber Company leads us first to the study of the 
power necessary to drive the heavy machinery used in the 
manufacture, and we therefore arrive first at the power 
house, an impressive example of modern engineering 

l 5 



knowledge and industrial efficiency. The size and simplicity 
of the boiler room are imposing, but more striking still are 
the ease, cleanliness, light and ventilation which attend the 
work performed. Mechanical stokers, filled by conveyors 
from the top of the building, automatically feed the big 
fires — monster infernos swallowing two hundred tons of 
coal a day — yet the boiler room is as spotless as a Dutch 
kitchen. Such a boiler room is doubly impressive when 
compared with the old-style method of hand-stoking, where 
grimy, sweating firemen, stripped to the waist, laboriously 
stoke the fire by hand. 

The dynamo room, where the energy developed by the 
boilers in the shape ot steam is converted into eledxic 
current, is equally clean and light. Here the strange, silent 
force of electricity springs from a busy battery of generators 
driven by huge turbines, directly connected, and then through 
the mammoth switchboards finds its way into the farthest 
recesses of the plant tor light, heat, and power. 

Again taking up our tour we first arrive at the compound- 
ing room. 

The biscuits of crude rubber are first passed between 
washing rollers over which a stream of water is constantly 
flowing, so that as the biscuits are crushed the impurities 
can be washed out and carried away. The rubber is then 
placed in huge vacuum ovens, as every trace of moisture 
must be removed before the rubber can be mixed or 
compounded. 

The direct analogy between rubber making and bread 
making is a curious one. Bread is made of flour with which 
lard, yeast, and other things are mixed to keep it from being 
tough and to make it " rise," that is, to leaven it or cause it 

16 



zJtCixing the dough 

to ferment and expand so that air can permeate its mass. 
The housewife kneads the dough to mix its ingredients all 
together, and then bakes it in whatever form she pleases. 
" Unleavened " bread is, of course, bread baked without 
yeast and unfermented, and would bear the same relation 
to the usual kind that the early rubber goods bear to those 
of the present day. The rubber overalls in which the hapless 
Jerry was pinned to the chair were " unleavened " overalls ; 
this, and all the rest of Goodyear's early failures having been 
due to his mistakes, so to speak, on the problem of his 
veast. 

The success of rubber making depends upon the propor- 
tion of the ingredients in the dough or stock, and to secure 

17 



that proportion the services of an expert chemist are essen- 
tial. The discovery of a new and better ingredient, or of 
a new and better or shorter process of combining the neces- 
sary ingredients, old or new, means industrial supremacy 
in the rubber business ; so that towards these ends many 
of the world's leading chemists ceaselessly work, and ways 
and methods and materials are winnowed by them year in 
and year out. 

Rubber compounding is done with the aid of an auto- 
matic scale capable of being set successively to the amounts 
of the various components in each batch. The sulphur, 
cement, and other chemical materials are thus accurately 
weighed in large quantities, ready to be mixed with the 
rubber into dough. 

Kneading in rubber manufacture is done on a gigantic scale, 
in machines with great steel cylinders, between which the 
rubber " dough " is pressed and mixed by force. The stock 
clings to the cylinders as dough clings to the rolling pin, 
and must be scraped off and kept in action by the workman 
who tends the machine. It heaves up in rolling billows 
between the shining steel and is drawn down again and 
around the roller by the revolution of the cylinders. 

The mill room of the Boston Woven Hose & Rubber 
Company with its range on range of these ponderous rollers, 
stretching one after another down its long white perspective, 
impresses one with the idea of tremendous motion and 
mammoth power. So great is the power required to drive 
these mills and overcome the resistance of the rubber to 
being mixed between the rollers, with all the attendant vibra- 
tion, that each machine has to be set in a solid block of 
concrete, tons upon tons having been required in the 

18 




The mill room 



foundations supporting the building. The busy workmen 
crossing and re-crossing the room with feet unheard in 
the concerted roar of the machines appear like millers, for 
many different kinds of powders are required in rubber 
compounding. 

Many kinds of rubber goods require fabrics in their con- 
struction. Such items as hose, belting, and certain kinds of 
tubings are not merely made of rubber, but of cotton sheet- 
ings and ducks which have been rubberized or " fridtioned." 
This means simply that the cloth has been run together 
with batches of soft, uncured rubber, through gigantic 
rollers filled with live steam, so that the fabric becomes 
impregnated with the rubber ; in fact, the rubber may 
almost be said to be a part of the fabric itself. 

T 9 




For those products where no fabrics are required, the 
rubber stock or " dough " is taken from the mixing-mills 
and sent to the manufacturing departments ; for, as in cook- 
ing, each product must be first fashioned out of the raw 
stock before being baked. 

Chapter V 
T'roduBs of the Industry 
'Rubber Hose 
HERE are more than twenty different kinds 
of rubber hose, and although the manufacture 
of the different grades is somewhat similar, 
their uses extend into practically every field 
of human endeavor. Starting with the cotton 
rubber-lined fire hose, for municipal, industrial, and count- 
less other uses, we find the raw stock required for the tube 
calendered in thin sheets plied one upon another to the 
desired thickness; so that if by any chance a slight defect 
should manifest itself in one layer, it would be protected by 
perfect sheets on either side. Thus in the baking process, 
when all the different plies flow into one unit to form the wall 
of the tube,it must necessarily become perfect in construction. 

Strips of the calendered rubber sheets are then cut to the 
desired width, and the edges lapped or butted together by 
hand to insure perfect workmanship. Most fire hose has 
a cotton jacket woven on circular looms under high tension, 
which makes a firm covering of great strength, but with 
little stretch ; in fact, the bursting pressure of fire hose often 
runs as high as one thousand pounds to the square inch. 
Each revolution of the loom takes thread from more than 
two hundred spools, and so much cotton yarn is required 

20 




dftCaking hose iy band 

that in one fifty-foot length of a fire-hose jacket there are 
more than one hundred and thirty-one miles of thread. 

Other kinds of hose have braided instead of woven jackets; 
still others are built up of alternate layers of rubber and 
rubberized fabrics. Many kinds have heavy rubber covers 
of great strength and toughness, while still others are tightly 
wound with wire to keep the cover from being torn by hard 
knocks while the hose is being used. 

2 I 



There is a great range of size in the manufacture of rubber 
hose, it being possible during a trip through the factory 
to see in process a variety of sizes ranging trom small tubings 
with only one-eighth ot an inch hole to immense suction 
hose and dredging sleeves three and four feet in diameter. 

It is hardly possible to find an industry of any walk in 
life where some kind of rubber hose is not essential to 
a day's work or pleasure. Aside from the fire protection 
of the cities and towns we live in, or the factories and public 
buildings we frequent, which are guarded by the fire hose 
just described, we find that such buildings could not have 
been easily built without the use of various kinds of hose. 
As soon as ground is broken and excavating is begun, water 




staking wire-lined suclion hose 
2 2 




Attaching garden-hose coupling 

always gathers and contractors usually find it necessary to 
employ suction hose attached to a pump to carry it off*. 
As the structure rises and iron framework is erected, the 
persistent report of the pneumatic riveter reminds us that 
pneumatic hose is carrying the compressed air used for 
power from the pump to the riveter, while various other 
kinds of steam hose and water hose are used for different 
purposes as the building nears completion. 

And the same is true through a whole line of rubber 
hose, including air- and steam-drill hose used in drilling bed 
rock prior to blasting, spray hose for fighting gypsy moths 
and other insect pests, sand-blast hose to carry the driven 
sand that restores the surfaces of stone buildings in 

2 3 



accordance with the " clean up and paint up " idea, down to 
the gasolene hose with which we fill our auto tank at a wayside 
station, while the vacuum hose used on vacuum cleaners 
right in our own homes brings the subject ot rubber hose 
closer to us all. 

But the best known hose of all is probably the garden 
hose. Here possibly more than common interest attaches 
to the manufacture, for most of us have some sort of garden, 
or at least a lawn, to keep fresh and green during the 
summer months. 

As in most kinds of hose, the tube is made first, but here 
we see not the hand process of the fire hose, but a seamless 
tube run to the proper diameter through a tube machine 
which, from the principles of its construction and operation, 
suggests a meat chopper. This machine takes a raw stock 
that is more like putty than rubber, and with the aid of 
a large worm screw forces the rubber out at the end of the 
machine through a die which gives the size of the hole and 
the thickness of the wall of the tube. After the tube has 
been drawn over a steel pole fifty feet long, in order that 
it may be handled easily, the rubberized fabric that forms 
the body of the hose and the narrow strip that forms the 
cover are cut to the proper widths and wrapped firmly about 
it, building up the desired number of plies. Thus the hose 
in its raw state is completely assembled ; but before being 
cured it must be tightly wrapped with strips of cotton cloth 
to keep it from swelling during the baking process. 

After being coupled and baled, it is ready for shipment, 
often more than twenty miles of garden hose a day being 
shipped from this one department, — enough in a year to 
reach from Boston to San Francisco. 

24 



That it serves its purpose well is proven by letters fre- 
quently received telling of lengths ot "Bull Dog" hose 
(probably the oldest and best known brand in the world), 
which have been in service fifteen years — sometimes longer 
— without showing signs of giving out. 

Brass Cjoods 

ON most kinds of hose, brass couplings and nozzles 
are necessary. The Boston Woven Hose & Rubber 
Company manufactures in its own brass foundry all such 
fittings for every type of hose. The foundry, like the 
power house, although somewhat removed from the ordi- 
nary processes of rubber manufacture, will amply repay the 
courtesy of a passing call, not only for its industrial interest, 
but for the beauty of its working process — one old in the 
history of mankind. 

The process of brass founding is simple. The liquefied 
mixture of metal is drawn from the blast furnace in a pot 
and poured into moulds of sand, to be taken from them 
when it has hardened and cooled sufficiently, as in any form 
of casting, and then finished by hand or machine. 

The pot full of molten metal drawn from the terrific 
heat of the furnace glows in a fierce intensity of color. It 
is carried by an iron ring with long handles, to the wait- 
ing moulds, and as the pot is lifted and tipped, the white 
metallic stream pours down into the waiting mould. A 
brilliant orange radiance, shifting now to yellow, now to 
scarlet, blazes out against the dull gray background of the 
foundry, and tongue-like fumes ot multicolored light are 
reflected from the white-hot metal, dazzling in their note 
of contrast. The workmen right the pot and pass to the 
next mould ; the filled moulds cool slowly until other 

2 5 




The brass foundry 

workmen, following at the proper interval, open them and 
remove the castings. 

The rough castings, whether couplings, nozzles, or fit- 
tings of any description, are then finished on automatic 

26 



machines to insure their uniformity as well as to make them 
smooth, highly polished accessories of all kinds ot hose. 

Here we see couplings and connections ranging from halt- 
inch garden hose couplings to the large connections used 
on fire and suction hose, weighing from fifteen to twenty 
pounds apiece, and nozzles ranging from the heavy fire 
department and underwriter play pipes, down to the Boston 
garden hose spray nozzle, with which we are all familiar. 




Stamping out rubber beels 

2 7 



^Rubber Heels and Soles 

BUT other things than hose are made in this great rubber 
factory. Passing into other buildings we find rubber 
heels and soles being made in great quantities. They are 
not cut individually by a pattern, as some people imagine, 
but stamped out of sheets with dies of various sizes just as 
a housewife cuts cookies out of dough, and are then baked 
in steel moulds under high temperature. 

T^ubber Mats and Matting 

IN a similar manner we also see mats of all kinds, first 
roughly cut to approximate sizes out of sheets of raw 
stock and then all cured in hydraulic presses. Some of the 
mats are smooth, some corrugated, and some have fantastic 
patterns, such as the demands of trade may dictate. Like 
rubber hose, mats are made for a great variety of uses. 
Everyone is familiar with the " diamond " doormat, which 




zA belt and mat press 
28 





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obtains its pattern from being baked in a mould resembling 
a waffle iron. Other mats are made in various shapes for 
automobile floor-coverings, while many kinds of matting 
are made and shipped in rolls to be cut and fitted as the 
purchaser desires. 



Rubber Belting 

RUBBER belts are made of many plies and are built up 
. to the proper widths and thicknesses by folding and 
cementing several sections of rubberized ducks and heavy 
canvas. The surfaces of the belts are vulcanized in a gigan- 
tic press where a pressure of twenty-five hundred pounds 
to the square inch is obtained. After the surfaces of the belt 
are vulcanized, it is placed in a large oven so that the edges 

2 9 



mav also be cured. Rubber belting is highly desirable for 
transmitting power or conveying great loads of ore and 
rocks. For transmission purposes rubber belting does not 
stretch and slip like other kinds, and as a conveyer the 
tough rubber cover resists abrasion from the sharp edges of 
stone and metal, where other covers become cut and torn. 

Fruit Jar Tijtigs 

RUBBER rings for fruit jars, although by comparison 
. a small item, are in fact a very important one, and 
although made quite differently from huge belts, are not, 
as is commonly supposed, stamped out of thin rubber sheets. 
Instead, they are cut from tubes which come from machines 
similar to those making garden-hose tubes, except that 
jar-ring tubes are larger in diameter and have thicker walls. 
The cutting is done on automatic machines or lathes, each 




'Hjjnning tubes for "Cjood Xjick" rings 

3° 




Counting and packing "(JooJ Ijick" rings 



of which produces one hundred and fifty thousand rings 
a day, in a variety of sizes to fit the different styles of fruit 
jars in common use. 

Rings are inspected, counted, and packed in cartons by 
girls who acquire such speed that each can handle forty 
thousand rings a day. 

Probably the best-known jar rubber to be found on the 
market is the "Good Luck " brand, which is made in this 
department and is the most widely used ring on the market, 
more than two million packages having been sold in 191 5 
without a single complaint. This is the ring used by canning 
club experts and demonstrators teaching the " cold 
pack " method of preserving recommended by the U. S. 

3 1 



Department of Agriculture and by the leading domestic 
science schools. On account of the rings being cooked on 
the jar with the fruit, the " cold pack " method has doomed 
for all time the cheap, unreliable rings which deteriorate 
under it. " Good Luck " rings were among the first to be 
found satisfactory for this new method of canning, and each 
year shows them in greater demand as housekeepers learn 
of their quality. It is interesting to note that one year's 
production of these rubbers, if linked in the form of a 
chain, would reach five thousand miles. 



R 



T{ubber Tape 

UBBER is the best electric insulator known, and there- 
fore friction and insulating tapes form an important 




putting tape into rolls 
32 




Surfacing friction tape 

part in the kit of every electrician. In making tapes, a fibrous, 
sticky compound is applied to the surface of cotton fabrics 
by machines known as spreaders, sometimes one and some- 
times both sides being coated. 

All the friction tapes made in the Boston Woven Hose 
& Rubber Company's factory are made of cloth first im- 
pregnated with rubber on calenders, before having the sur- 
face compound applied by the spreading machines. This 
procedure insures tape free from pin-holes, of firm body 
and high insulation test, features which cannot be guaranteed 
where the soft fibrous compound is applied directly to the 
surface of uncalendered cloth. 

Other kinds of tape are made without fabric, being entirely 
composed of an excellent quality of unvulcanized rubber. 
Such tapes are usually known as " splicing compounds " or 
simply "rubber tapes," as distinguished from "friction tapes," 

33 



as the rubberized fabric tapes are more commonly known. 
Tapes are run in widths of thirty-six inches or more, and 
after being rolled on a core or paper tube, the long rolls are 
cut by hand into smaller rolls of varying widths, according 
to the roll widths desired, and packed in tin foil or cartons 
for shipment. 

Chapter VI 

Historical 

HE history of the Boston Woven Hose & 
Rubber Company is one of those surprising 
narratives of the industrial world that vie in 
interest and progression with the imagery of 




fiction. In 1870 Lyman R. Blake, the in- 
ventor of the sole-sewing machine so successfully exploited 
by Gordon McKay, devised a machine for sewing up strips 
of rubber-coated canvas into hydraulic hose. He sold this 
machine to Col. Theodore A. Dodge, of Cambridge, who 
began with it the manufacture of " Blake Hose," a product 
which steadily advanced in character until it really became 
excellent. Its sales, however, scarcely advanced at all, for 
although the stitches were the one part of the hose that 
never gave out, the public looked askance at the seam, and 
the product was not a favorite. 

When, therefore, in 1872, James E. Gillespie brought 
to Colonel Dodge the designs of a loom for weaving mul- 
tiple tubular fabrics, the latter was quick to grasp its possi- 
bilities. Tubular goods had never been woven except on 
flat looms, which left a weak spot along the edge ; goods 
woven in the round could not be made sufficiently solid, and 
only braided fabrics had ever been successfully marketed. 

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Gillespie's loom was workable, but on account of its eighty 
thousand parts, was too "cranky" and too apt to break 
down ; so Colonel Dodge hired an assistant for Gillespie 
named Robert Cowen, a young machinist of exceptional 
ability and persistence. Cowen at once set to work to im- 
prove the loom, and Dodge continued to finance the experi- 
ment until he had expended a hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars on it. By that time the loom was radically, and they 
believed, satisfactorily altered; so with the help of one manand 
a boy they began business with it in part of an old soap factory. 

Dodge had set a big financial sail ; the wind of success 
now suddenly caught it ; the sail was well made, and the 
frail vessel of his venture got away from him. Orders rained 
in too fast for him to handle on the limited capital remain- 
ing to him, so in the spring of 1884 he took as an associate 
Mr. J. Edwin Davis, the three principals of the company 
forming a corporation. 

From then on the growth of the business was hardly 
short of phenomenal. By 1893 the capital had been in- 
creased to six hundred thousand dollars, a plant had been 
creeled for the special requirements of the business, and 
again and again substantially increased with land and build- 
ings. From the manufacture of hose the business rapidly 
increased in scope to rubber belting, jar rings, packing, 
gaskets, moulded goods, and indeed almost everything then 
possible in rubber manufacture except clothing and shoes. 

Still fortune followed ; the wonderfully favorable issues 
of the company being largely due to the ingenious machines 
created by Mr. Cowen for more rapid and more staple 
manufacture of its goods. Then a new line was embarked 
on — bicycle tires — with asuccess so pronounced that the factory 

35 



was snowed under with orders ; the capital stock had to be 
increased to nine hundred thousand dollars, and the machin- 
ery was run twenty-four hours a day to supply the demand. 
The staple lines of the business were crowded out or side- 
tracked by the tire trade, until finally, at the height of an 
unprecedented prosperity, the whole bottom fell out of the 
bicycle industry in the panic of 1897. Before the company 
could shorten sail and come about in safety, it had been 
driven on the rocks of reorganization. 

The lesson was severe, but salutary. The company re- 
turned to manufacture along the lines that had given it its 
healthy growth, and speedily built up again. New processes 
and new machines, designed exclusively for its use, brought 
its former business back in rapid order, while mystified com- 
petitors, not knowing about its ingenious inventions for 
economical production, lavishly predicted its early collapse, 
arguing that no company could sell goods of so high a grade 
at so low a price and live. 

So far from collapsing, it expanded rapidly and cease- 
lessly, forced from one addition into another; and such, in 
a word, has been its history to the present day ; a history 
of sound, constructive growth, operatively and financially ; 
of economical production and standard methods ; of right 
men and proper means. It has never had a shutdown, 
a strike, or a lockout, and few concerns number among 
their employees more who have grown gray in their service. 
There are men in the Boston Woven Hose & Rubber 
Company today who worked at the bench with its founders, 
and to such workmen and to such methods must be ascribed 
their due share of its success. 



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